Photo: CAITLIN O’HARA @caitlin_oh
When 10-year-old Talon Fiedler began his life anew, so did his family.
Talon was 9 when he asked his mom, Ashly Fiedler, “If I tell you something, do you promise not to cry?” Assigned female at birth, Talon said he was a boy. Ashly replied, “Your dad and I love you no matter what, and that won’t ever change.”
They’ve made good on that promise. Ashly, a 39-year-old nurse, called her husband, Derrick Fiedler, an active duty Army National Guard captain stationed overseas. When Derrick returned to their Iowa home last July,anti-trans legislationthere made them decide to move.
“We knew that Iowa was not going to be a good place for us,” Derrick, 43, tells PEOPLE in the latest issue celebrating LGBTQ Pride Month.
Derrick, Ashly, their daughter Nadia, 16, and Talon relocated to the Tucson area three months later. The family’s new home in Arizona was a fresh start.
“I was excited just so that I could have the different name and pronouns,” Talon says. His dad recalls: “The relief and the joy in his face made me realize that this was real.”
For more on PEOPLE’s 2022 Pride Issue, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.
The Fiedlers found a therapist specializing in trans youth as well as a pediatrician and joined theFamilies Transformedsupport group.
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“Everybody else in the support group went through the same range of emotions that we did: a lot of worrying, concern, and hoping that it was just a phase,” Derrick explains. “I felt like a little bit of a failure as a parent for even having those thoughts. But then to find out that it was pretty common across the board, and that if you just keep your child’s best interest in mind and believe them, things are going to work out.”
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source: people.com
